Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net CHEFS D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN REALISTS [Illustration: Chapter XXI _Jupillon was a true Parisian: he loved to fish with a pole and line._ _And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of the garden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board resting on two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in her skirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream._] BIBLIOTHEQUE DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN CONTEMPORAIN _GERMINIE LACERTEUX_ EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA GERMINIE LACERTEUX PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION We must ask pardon of the public for offering it this book, and give it due warning of what it will find therein. The public loves fictitious novels! this is a true novel. It loves books which make a pretence of introducing their readers to fashionable society: this book deals with the life of the street. It loves little indecent books, memoirs of courtesans, alcove confessions, erotic obscenity, the scandal tucked away in pictures in a bookseller's shop window: that which is contained in the following pages is rigidly clean and pure. Do not expect the photograph of Pleasure _decolletee_: the following study is the clinic of Love. Again, the public loves to read pleasant, soothing stories, adventures that end happily, imaginative works that disturb neither its digestion nor its peace of mind: this book furnishes entertainment of a melancholy, violent sort calculated to disarrange the habits and injure the health of the public. Why then have we written it? For no other purpose than to annoy the public and offend its tastes? By no means.